Young artist Kimbal Bumstead
Yesterday we had visit of Kim, a young English artist. We met him here in Chelva at friends. He offered to help me getting started with Final Cut Pro, the program in which I want to edit my video´s in the future. During lunch he told about the trip he made over the last year, hitchhiking through Europe. We had an interesting conversation about how to create a future as an artist. The experiences of the last forty years from Helma and me opposite the future expectations of Kim. What do you wish of an artist´s life, and can you make a living out of it? An open and enthusiastic conversation with perhaps the most important conclusions: It will not always be easy but don’t give up and keep believing in yourself. And above all: don’t go for cheap success! I am convinced Kim wil find his way.
Watch the slideshow of his last trip and listen to his beautiful story.
Kim: “This slideshow is the prelude to a book, which is the fragmented anthology of a series of encounters. These encounters took place inside cars, truck cabins, roadsides, cafés, and at border crossings throughout Europe. Between January and December 2012, I travelled overland on foot and by hitchhiking through a series of lines that I had marked on a map, and the people who I met on the way form the basis of these encounters. I wanted to see this as a one to one performance piece in which the audience stumbled on the performance by chance. I was the protagonist, the performer, producing a social sculpture that moved physically through small roads, carrying local traffic that ultimately contained drivers who would invite me into their homes.
At night I slept in fields, gas stations and sheds. Occasionally also in truck cabins and on living room floors, and in the morning I would go back to the road and wait. Every place I waited I took a photograph of the road looking ahead. Each road the same, each day the same, but each encounter unique. Through the stories, the photos take on the history, memory and energy of those who inhabit that place, but also the disinterest of those who simply pass through as a transit route to go somewhere else knowing nothing, or guessing, or simply not wanting to know.
There was no script to these meetings, as one might expect from a one to one performance, each encounter was unique depending on the energy I received from the person I met. I noticed however, as I moved across borders, that certain themes were reoccurring, the fantasy of a place on the other side, the fear, hatred or envy of ones neighbours, and the glorification of the place I call my home. London – a living organism – neither a city nor a nation – that drifts around the imaginations of searchers and seekers. She does not belong to anybody, but almost everyone I met had some connection to her.
The resulting text loosely becomes a projection of home – mine and others – exploring notions of us and them, absurdities and tensions across borders, and an intimate insight into the lives of ordinary Europeans. Europe – a garden with walls.
During 2012 I made a triangle through Europe through England, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Spain.
This text is a selection from over 300 encounters.
This project has been supported by and presented as a live performance at BasementArtsProject – Leeds, SUPERMARKET independent art fair – Kulurhuset, Stockholm, PAiN residency programme (Performance Art in Norrbotten) – Luleå, Sweden, Ptarmigan – Helsinki and Tallinn, Bunkier Sztuki – Krakow, Poland, Bridewell Gallery – Liverpool Independents Biennial